Half-square block

Fields of triangles are very old. Barbara Brackman writes that they are seen in the earliest of quilts and shows medallion coverlets with a field of triangles, inscribed "Anna Tuels ... 1785" and "1807 M.B.". The International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, has rows of small identical triangles from England from about 1840 and a red and white quilt dated 1883, possibly from New Hampshire.

We have found no old name for the triangle as a block of its own. The museum calls these quilts Triangles, but uses that name for other patterns too. Nor have we found who coined the term half-square triangle. The names most used for patterns of these triangles, Broken Dishes and Yankee Puzzle, came according to Brackman only with books from the first half of the 1900s.

The point is to turn the blocks: Brackman gathers them all under one number and shows how they change when rotated or set on point. The museum in Lincoln has a quilt from 1890–1910, probably from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, in which turned triangles form diamonds, and one from 1880–1890, possibly from Rajasthan in India, of large scrap triangles turned various ways.

Here you see it in Triangles, every other turned and Triangles, four around: the same block, every other turned or four round. The triangle is also a building block of blocks like Pinwheel, and divided once more it becomes an Hourglass.